Variety reported in its review that director Howard Hawks used footage from the movie Hell's Angels (1930) for the big bomber expedition sequence, the main dogfight, and the head-on collision of two airplanes.
The preview running time was 135 minutes, indicating much was cut before its release.
Joan Crawford met Franchot Tone while working on this picture. They would marry two years later (her second, his first) - and divorce in 1939.
Irving Thalberg, VP of production at MGM insisted on using Joan Crawford in this picture as she was on contract for $500,000 per year ($11.5M in 2023), working or not. This inclusion of a love interest in the film started a series of re-writes for William Faulkner.
The only film pairing of Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper. Contemporary news stories of the day reported Crawford insisted on Cooper as her co-star. Cooper had to be borrowed from Paramount for this picture.
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